


hoist the colors; or how flags that mean home change

by voidofthestars



Series: friends in the face of nightmares [1]
Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Backstory, Child Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Off screen child death, Pirates, Tags May Change, Violence, its about cathilda being a pirate idk what u want, the tags make it look rough
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:22:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21712159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voidofthestars/pseuds/voidofthestars
Summary: By 25 she's fully embraced the pirate life. She's fought and killed and stole her way to the top of the food chain on the ship. But she's also traded favors and made friends on the way up too, and when she overthrows the old captain, very few opposed her. (She's always been a very ambitious young woman, and she knew the moment her boots hit the deck of that old ship she was going to captain it.)---if brennan doesnt give us cathilda lore then ill make up my own
Relationships: Cathilda (Dimension 20) & Fabian Aramais Seacaster
Series: friends in the face of nightmares [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1564951
Comments: 12
Kudos: 61





	hoist the colors; or how flags that mean home change

**Author's Note:**

> as soon as the episdoe ended i was immideatly writing this. its been a while since i knocked out a fic of this size this qucikly, in like three days.
> 
> anyway i absolutly love her and i 100% would die for her.
> 
> yet again titles and tags to change if i feel something better come along

Cathilda is 19 when she leaves her home to find adventure on the seas. Her parents died years ago and she's all alone and so, so very tired of being so. So she sets out and joins a crew of sailors, departing out into the setting sun.

She is 21 (and ½. The half is important, she fought hard to get this far and she'll take any scrap she can get.) when that crew is taken over by pirates. She fights long and hard and at the end standing in front of the captain, he offers her a job. She takes it.

By 25 she's fully embraced the pirate life. She's fought and killed and stole her way to the top of the food chain on the ship. But she's also traded favors and made friends on the way up too, and when she overthrows the old captain, very few opposed her. (She's always been a very ambitious young woman, and she knew the moment her boots hit the deck of that old ship she was going to captain it.)

35 years old and she has a moniker, an epithet of her own. Cathilda the Black, black for her flags and for the blood that coats her daggers in the heat of battle, blades thick with red that looks black in the dying cannon and pistol lights. She's slaughtered pirates and navy alike, pillaged and sunk countless ships and amassed millions in treasure as well as gathered a small fleet of her own. She tolerates no mutiny and demands only the best from her crew and in return rewards them greatly with the freedom and protection of the seas. She grants those she captures the same clemency she was given all those years ago, join or be sent on your way. Even town guards in the port cities are wary and respectful of her. She revels in her fame and success because now she does have a family, one of her own making.

And at 35, she meets fellow captain, Jericho the Howler Jack. He's funny and sweet and seemingly perfect and in awe of her. He courts her the way she always dreamed of as a little girl making daisy chains in the schoolyard, with flowers and soft words. He's a half-elf/air genasi, and he makes her so very very happy. And so a year later when he asks, she says yes. And so Cathilda the Black and Jericho the Howler Jack are wed the way pirates usually are; a large party on the Leviathan and copious amounts of alcohol. Hundreds of pirates looking for an opportunity to drink and celebrate, with heads of prominent crews giving gifts and extending treaties.

(She meets a young Gardy O'Brian that night, and they graciously offer the happy couple a room at a significant discount as a wedding gift. Years and years later, they'll meet again, both much older and wiser. They'll toast her across the bar and say nothing of the past. She'll smile and raise her glass in response and return to her conversation with Gilear.)

And the years go on and go on and she's 41 almost 42 and she's so tired. And furious. But mostly so very sad in her heart. Nearly 6 years she'd been married to Jericho and so many mistakes have been made. Mainly staying married to him. As the years past from their wedding day, he'd grown cruel. And bloodthirsty. 

Don't get her wrong, as a pirate she too could be vicious but she had her rules and her lines and the things she would not do. Her prisoners were given fair treatment, the option to join. If they declined they were put on lifeboats with just enough supplies to get to the closest shore or in the path of the nearest navy ship. Or if that was unreasonable they'd be held till the next port and released while she and hers slipped away. 

Call her whatever you would like but women and children civilians were left alone and treated with as much bare bones respect pirates could give those who didn't fight. Pirates had codes for a reason damnit.

But Jericho, no, for him it was once you set sail on the sea, your life was forfeit and up the gods to play with. 

(He was an arrogant man, considering himself hands of gods.)

At 41, she's also a mother, which is something she had never thought she would want, and not as young as she was, not that she regrets them. Two lovely children, about 2 years apart. 

(In the quiet nights standing at the bow of the ship looking at the moon, she thinks she could even retire and raise her children. Alone of course) 

Jericho doesn't lay a hand on her, he knows what she would do to him, but she slowly begins to notice bruises in odd places on her eldest, her darling daughter, and notice how little her young son wants to be around him. And she adds all these things and more, a list of the sins of Jericho the Howler and well, she's always had a head for numbers.

Always pushing to combine fleets, leering at other women, other little details that only made sense from a distance. She knew he would need to go, and so Cathilda did what she did best. She made her way through his crew, making friends and doing favors till yet again she had charmed an entire crew.

It takes three years to get to where she felt comfortable to make her move but when she did, she sure as hell made it a public spectacle.

("Jericho the Howler Jack, for your crimes against the code of pirates I hear by challenge your right to your ship, your crew, your life, and most of all, your right to me." 

She had spent 10 years knowing Jericho, and 9 years wed to him. She learned with him and fought with him for long enough. Their duel is a short one, and ends with his head nailed to the mainmast. And in doing so she manages to do what he could not; consolidate their fleets under one flag. )

Her peace lasts only ten years. She has yet to grow tired, still only in the first quarter of her life. Her children are young yet but bring such joy to her life, and are doted on by the crew. Her notoriety has spread through much of the seas, though she truly has nothing on old Bill Seacaster. 

(She's only ever met him a few times at this point. Twice in Leviathan, in passing at her wedding and once during her marriage to Jericho. Once was on the open sea shortly after her son had been born. The three main flagships had anchored together and threw a brief party, under the guise of celebrating her son's birth. She thought he was a good if an exuberant man.)

Tragedy strikes one night when a storm catches everyone by surprise, but more importantly masks the arrival of the crew of rival captain Bullrush Coppermouth, a dragonborn who had vastly preferred working with Jericho over herself. The fight between them last most of the night. She tries to keep her children tucked away in a hidden room but her daughter, a battle cleric and stubborn as the sea itself she was, slipped out to join the fight, to defend her home and family. 

By the time Cathilda has realized what happened, Coppermouth finds her first. But neither Coppermouth nor his crew and ship survive the night, or her grief.

She, her son, and her crew mourn for months. At 54 she begins making her preparations to retire, to raise her son on land. Doles out captainship to loyal members of her crew, the ones who had stuck with her from the beginning, or the ones devoted to the code, and slowly breaks her fleet down, till only her flagship remains. 

Her deeds as a pirate continue to catch up with her in the form of her son catching sick, a sickness too fast and deadly to be helped in time. Within a single year, she had lost both of her children and she was once again alone. 

She gives up. Sends her crew out under the leadership of her first mate and hangs up her blades. She feels too young and too old all at once. Nearly 150 years left of her possible life span and she hates it so much. Cathilda the Black is no more, left at the bottom of the ocean with the remains of her children, body left to drown itself in the bottom of a flask. 

That's where Bill Seacaster finds her, some odd years later. He sits beside her in some dead-end half condemned tavern, where she spends most of her days drunk and maudlin.

He sits beside her, orders a drink, and drinks in silence for a while. He offers both condolences and a choice. He explains that a while ago he'd been offered clemency for his pirate crimes if he stuck to Solace's lands, a tiny town named Elmville. As his wife, Hallariel, was heavily pregnant, he decided to take it. The government gave him the option to bring a few quote-unquote help, with him, servants and the like, into the country as well as a courtesy. He lays it out as such; there's room on the ship and in his household as the head of their servants if she so chooses. If she says yes, she would no longer be the fearsome pirate captain, but instead their future children's nanny and caretaker. 

After a night spent drinking and thinking, her future is clear for the first time in about 6 years. At nearly 62, she hangs up her pirate title and picks up maid instead.

(When he brings her through the governmental building on the way into the country, many do a double-take. "Aren't you Cathilda the Black?" They'd ask. And she'd reply. "Oh my no. Don't you know? Cathilda the Black died many years ago.)

(One day, when Fabian and his friends sit down with her to hear her story, she'll look him dead in the eye and tell him this was one of the few but greatest acts of kindness William Seacaster had ever done, and "That, my dear boy, is how I know you've already surpassed him. You do great and wonderfully kind acts for people without expectations, with few thoughts to what they can do for you. For you being kind is not a favor to be invoked at a later date, being kind is something in your heart." His friends will only poke a little bit of fun at the tears in his eyes.)

And so she goes with Seacaster, to his home in Solace, with his already impressively pregnant wife, who looks terribly antsy for not having neither sword nor drink in hand. And she learns how to adjust. She doesn't chafe as much as she expected to, taking orders and such from both Seacasters. Instead, she settles somewhat into a rhythm. Turns out manual labor is manual labor whether one is aboard a seafaring vessel or loading and unloading kitchen produce. The work keeps her busy and tired, almost enough to not dream. She splits her time between learning the functions of the house and assisting Hallariel Seacaster in her last trimester of an unfortunately long elven style pregnancy.

(Seeing, who most consider the greatest swordswoman alive, Hallariel, miserable in her pregnancy is on a deep and distant level, quite funny, bringing back memories of being pregnant twice over on a ship. Later it'll just be sad, having to escort her barely there, stumbling form to her sensory deprivation tank while fielding questions from a very young Fabian.) 

She had turned 62 not a week before when Hallariel stood up abruptly amid a late-night snack, just the two of them, with Bill off somewhere they both know better than to ask about, and announced, in a quite panicked voice that it was time. They barely have enough time to call the doctor before she having labor pains, and Cathilda steps up in her place as the head maid and more importantly as a mother who had her own children out on the open seas. This, by comparison, is much easier.

(She jokes to Fabian that Hallariel was barely in labor 30 minutes before her son's tiny little self came barreling out, "Already so excited and ready to go on an adventure and see the world." It's almost required of her to pinch his terribly red cheeks at that, regardless of him being a young man and also nearly twice and a half her height.)

And then she's holding one Fabian Aramais Seacaster, their tiny little son in her hands, she takes a deep deep breath and truly and finally lays Cathilda the Black, scourge of the seas, bloodthirsty pirate, to her rest at the bottom of the seas and brings to life one Cathilda Ceili, head of the servants and personal maid to the Seacasters. She looks at his tiny little hands gripping hers and the silly little quirk of a grin on his mouth and knows she would do anything for this boy.

(Fifteen years later she's back on the Leviathan and one Captain James Wicklaw (no epithet? Pirates these days, no sense of drama or panache) has laid a hand on her darling boy, her son! And Cathilda the Black comes roaring back, blades thirsting for justice, for retribution like she never left. She thinks, almost wryly to herself before descending on Wicklaw like the Nine Hells themselves, had her own children turned out anything like Fabian and his friends, she would have been so very proud of them.)

**Author's Note:**

> <3<3<3 thanks for reading!!
> 
> follow me on tumblr where i cry about everyone even more @ voidofthestars.tumblr.com


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